How do you do it? What's to be done?

I struggle with maintaining photos. I have the gear but no will to use it after work. My quick and dirty approach is take cell phone images of my coins, rather than not show them. They always come with an apology.
You might consider being shameless and starting a new thread as well for your coin. Most internet forums encourage creation and readership of new threads, rather than revisiting bloated, archival threads. And hey, your coins deserve some time in center stage!

 

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I have been trying to catch up with the crew here who have photos and descriptions of many of their coins in a database or spreadsheet.

I am getting there with my Greek collection but only scratching the surface with Roman and others.

I collected many coins in the days before pcs and I need some serious time to find and catalogue them.

John

 

I am ashamed to admit that I do not have a photo of every coin in my collection. I went to a show today and bought five coins but my wife insisted we have supper so I just have not gotten around to it yet. Worse, I decided to read this thread which is already on page two meaning no one will be reading this post. I do have the rest of my coins photographed and organized in a way that makes sense to me. I also have a few thousand photos I have taken for other people and of coins I once owned but those are harder to lay hands on instantly. Some are prints heaped randomly in boxes or negatives that no one wants to print anymore.

I can not imagine not having photos of my ancient coins (but I have never taken a photo of a proof dime). I took my first coin photos over 50 years ago and I hope none of you have seen 'The Voice of the Turtle' where the first were published.

Excuse me but I have coins to shoot. The pressure of not having done them already is becoming more than I can bear. I hope someone posts a thread where I can show them appropriately but there was no Otho or other popular Caesar so I probably don't need to rush.

 

Like just about everyone else, I have a lot of pictures of my coins from over the years. Some I re-shoot with a new tool. So, there's that...

Also, I do not tally "likes." I like what I like or not. Conversely, when you are here long enough, you get the points. But if you are here just to win the approval of others, you have deeper issues to resolve. All the coins in the world won't help that.

Some threads, I read laboriously, others not. I have been away for months... but I have been here since about Day 2 or 3. So, just to say, it all evens out.

BTW, I did not own my Avatar coin when I added the image from Tony Fein, from whom I did buy other coins for an article that I wrote about medieval Champagne. However, at the ANA in Irving in March, I did buy one. The thing with these is that if you look at the coin obliquely, it becomes a correct 3-D image.
More here.
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/my-avatar.237597/#post-1802556

I am researching an article about this method for The Numismatist. Many coins work like this.

 

I use Excel and it does allow me to add images. Each entry is accompanied by the image of the coin. I have shared this database with others here on CT and would be glad to provide it to you. If you have ever worked with Excel, it does take a little getting used to, but I find it very easy.

 

I aspire to photograph every coin in my collection. It’s doable at about 250 coins or so. I’m about 2/3rds the way there. I keep the pix in Dropbox subfolders where they are easily accessible via the Dropbox app or from any computer with Internet. With the Dropbox app, I can grab a pic via my phone and post to a thread without leaving my easy chair.

 

Let me also recommend to people to store all your coin photos and information in some cloud based file storage system if you are not already doing so. I use OneDrive and can get to all my photos from any phone or computer anywhere (which is fun!). I don't worry anymore about my computer crashing and losing all my files. There are many such services that range from free to reasonable in price. Relying on one computer or even local backups of one computer is too risky and not necessary anymore.

John

 

I try to read every post no matter how long the thread becomes.

I feel like long threads attract my attention because they must be interesting to generate that much traffic. Threads that sink into the deep (i.e. forum page 2) after a few posts must be highly specialized or come to some kind of closure early.

John

 

I have my gallery at Forum with descriptions and references. Easy enough to copy and paste wherever it's needed. Easy. It's also the link in my signature.

 

I recently photographed all of my coins over a period of several weeks, which included image editing and naming the files in such a way that they are easy to search and find a relevant coin to post. I have a compact but effective set-up in a basement workroom that's out of the way, but ready to go for when I receive a new coin.

Still, I'm not a prolific poster. Before I photographed everything, I had the same issues as you. I didn't like using dealer photos because a) they're not mine, and b) most of them aren't very good. So I rarely posted photos, but I would sometimes comment on other people's photos.

 

Agreed. Why bother to post a pic that no one sees? There's no point in that.

 

I have a pics on my computer and a back up hdd as well as online on my forvm gallery

 

I’m jealous of the photography skills many possess here. I can only use my cell phone currently which makes it easy to post quickly but the quality suffers.

 

I take a photo whenever I receive a coin and it goes into my "photos" file which also automatically backs up to Google Photos in the cloud. I can sort by date on Google photos, download the pic, and post it within seconds.

 

Okay, having gotten this far, I have to ask: why take pics? I suppose if you have a large collection you wouldn't want to go through them all just to see what you have. And putting them into a spreadsheet makes them more accessible. But photos? I do have a small collection compared to what you all have, probably less than 200 coins, but I do have an inventory database. It's an app on my tablet that lets me record how many of a particular year I have plus a note field I use to record the location of the coin and anything else I feel is important. But no photos. Should I be doing that? What are the advantages beyond being able to show others what you have? So far I'm okay with what I have.

 

For me there is no particular advantage to having the image alongside my database entry other than to see the coin of which I am referring. Seeing just the description alone does not always bring that particular coin to mind. I have approximately 900 coins. I'm getting old! I think I have that old peoples decease called CRS (can't remember .......). So it helps jog that old memory DRAM; like an external drive.

 

I assume your collection is largely modern coins? The difference with many of the collectors here is that ancients are all unique because of hand-engraved dies and manual striking so whereas a modern collector might only need to know that he has an 1888-O Morgan in PCGS MS-65, there's really no substitute for having a good photo for an ancient coin.

 

I like the diversity of the responses in this thread and the rich combination of options for image handling you are suggesting. So far I have nothing archived online, but the Forum option looks attractive.

I used to scan everything and edit the scans in Photoshop. From that I have an archive of over 3000 images that so far I have not used here at all. These are alpha-numerically coded and the number is written on the flip insert accompanying each coin. About half of my late Roman bronzes (1500 coins) have been done this way. It was a servicable system, but scanners suffer in controlling depth of field, most noticeably in closeups, and don't allow for angle of exposure. So now I use a combo Canon and Nikon system for imaging directly into a computer, bracket exposures for each side, and do the final edit in Photoshop. On average I will make 6 to 10 exposures per coin (3 to 5 per side), and these will be archived raw. From them I select the obv and rev views, which will be combined and edited for tone, color, and size. The final edits will vary from 3-6 Mgb per two-side image. For upload to online venues I do a reduction to 200K. For archival storage of raw and final edits I use 2TB external drives and a 6TB outboard RAID5 array. So far the newer approach is being used mainly for silver, which I never did with a scanner.

At the moment about the only way I can enter these discussions with images is to use the seller image archive in my acquisition logs (arranged by company and lot number) which makes individual coins hard to locate. [When did I buy that? - hmmmm.] But except for starting my own threads, I'm afraid I'm going to be late to the party most of the time, until the most commonly accessed part of my material is caught up.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

I consider photographing coins AT ALL to be so painful as to not be worth doing it.

 

In my case, I have a database and I also upload all my coin photos (my own or dealer photos) to DropBox. DropBox gives me mobile access to the photos wherever I may be.